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More from @bijaya_biswal

Bijaya Biswal

@bijaya_biswal

3 Aug

Why are rapes of dalit/adivasi women never declared as the "rarest of rare" cases?

1/23

When the "Nirbhaya" rape took place in Dec 2012, former Chief Justice Leila Seth was bewildered by the gruesome nature of the crime. The doctor involved in examining the victim admitted she had never seen anything so ruthless in her entire career.

2/23

The case was considered “rarest of the rare” in the court of law since it had shocked the collective conscience of the people owing to “the manner of commission of the murder, the motive for commission of the murder...

Read 23 tweets

Bijaya Biswal

@bijaya_biswal

2 Aug

@Simone_Biles

While we are speaking about mental health, thanks to @Simone_Biles & Naomi Osaka, lets not forget that many people are deprived of the agency to get rid of the stressors/causes behind their mental distress, because these causes are socio-political in nature.

(1/8)

@SaibaVarma

@SaibaVarma elaborates on this in her interview with @livemint. "One woman in southern Kashmir’s Tral area, who had lost her husband in an encounter, told the NGO (which was focused on counselling and psychotherapy) that she did not want more counselling but financial help...

to rebuild the part of her house where the encounter had occurred. This was beyond the NGO’s scope and the NGO workers could not help. But she was crystal clear—for her, rebuilding her house was intimately connected to her recovery."

(3/8)

Read 8 tweets

Bijaya Biswal

@bijaya_biswal

1 Aug

I remember how my school teachers would humiliate kids who didn't do their homework by asking "haven't you eaten today? If you dont forget to eat how did you forget to do the homework?''

(1/9)

Many of my classmates came from marginalized backgrounds: children of labourers, diary farmers, autorickshaw pullers, sanitation workers. They often came, actually, came to school hungry. They cut down on meals to save money. Worked in evenings instead of completing homework.

The humiliation at school also sometimes involved the cleanliness of the clothes they were wearing or their handwriting or their exam scores. Cleanliness was next to godliness for teachers. Calligraphy and arithmetic was a sign of true ''merit"

(3/9)

Read 9 tweets

Bijaya Biswal

@bijaya_biswal

1 Aug

“My first child is from the man I love.He’s one of my permanent customers [clients].” Many women here use the English word ‘permanent’ to indicate regular, long-term clients. Sometimes, they call them ‘partner’.

“See, my first child was not planned. Nor was this pregnancy, obviously. But I continued both times because he asked me to. He said he’d bear all the expenses of the child and he kept his word on that,” she says, with some satisfaction in her tone.

Quite a few sex workers here avoid using any form of contraception when with their ‘permanent’ clients. On conceiving, they abort – or like Beauty, have the child. All to please the men they are involved with, in order to preserve a longer lasting relationship with them.

Read 5 tweets

Bijaya Biswal

@bijaya_biswal

31 Jul

"In mid-1960s, there was a time when people were dying due to starvation after the drought in 1965. A place named Bijakhaman (Bija is a tuber plant) in Komna block of Nuapada in Odisha provided food to a lot of villagers."

"People from the nearby villages daily collected tubers from the forest and survived the severe drought. Up to five-feet long tubers were loaded on bullock carts and transported to villages to save many lives."

"But, with time the forest department took complete control over those forests. Cutting of all those plants that once saved many lives was followed by burning down the area to clear it for plantation. Today you can’t find any of those tubers there!"

Read 5 tweets